Agumbe Rainforest Research Station is located
smack in the middle of Agumbe Reserved Forest – now a designated World
Heritage Site - in the state of Karnataka. It is a picturesque yet an
unpretentious outfit – seems straight out of a movie.Built on a small clearing amidst the
surrounding dense forest, the station is but a small set of quaint,
comfortable cottages that survive on a sustainable solar and hydel power
system. It was set up in 2005 by the world-famous herpetologist Romulus
Whitaker to encourage field studies in rainforest ecology. Seven years on,
King cobras, grey langurs, leopards, lion-tailed macaques outnumber the
researchers at the base.

Agumbe
receives some of the heaviest rainfall in the world, which, together with
its topography and the density of forests, has made it conducive to
different species of snakes, particularly the King cobra - the longest
venomous snake in the world. Rom Whitaker, popularly known as the snake man
of India, has been working with reptiles here since the 1960s. His fifty
years of work in India is the stuff that great narratives and legends are
made of. The story begins long before his arrival in India.

To Rom Whitaker, hunting snakes has always been a
passion. He caught his first snake when he was just four. This was in the
country estate that he shared with his mother and sister in northern New
York State. Although scared of snakes, his artist mother encouraged him
tremendously and soon he started bringing home garter snakes and milk
snakes. Then came the Big Move. In 1950, Rom's mother married an Indian
gentleman and moved the family to Bombay, India when Rom was seven. For the
next ten years Rom went to a boarding school up in the mountains in the
south, in India's favourite biodiversity hotspot, the Western Ghats.
Weekends were spent hunting snakes in the surrounding jungles, while
weekdays were spent looking after a 12 foot python that lived quietly under
his bed at the dorm. Somewhere in between the two activities, he attended
classes.